Islam saved Jewry. This is an unpopular, discomforting claim in the modern world. But it is a historical truth. The argument for it is double. First, in 570 CE, when the Prophet Mohammad was born, the Jews and Judaism were on the way to oblivion. And second, the coming of Islam saved them, providing a new context in which they not only survived, but flourished, laying foundations for subsequent Jewish cultural prosperity - also in Christendom - through the medieval period into the modern world.

By the fourth century, Christianity had become the dominant religion in the Roman empire. One aspect of this success was opposition to rival faiths, including Judaism, along with massive conversion of members of such faiths, sometimes by force, to Christianity. Much of our testimony about Jewish existence in the Roman empire from this time on consists of accounts of conversions.

Great and permanent reductions in numbers through conversion, between the fourth and the seventh centuries, brought with them a gradual but relentless whittling away of the status, rights, social and economic existence, and religious and cultural life of Jews all over the Roman empire.

A long series of enactments deprived Jewish people of their rights as citizens, prevented them from fulfilling their religious obligations, and excluded them from the society of their fellows.

This went along with the centuries-long military and political struggle with Persia. As a tiny element in the Christian world, the Jews should not have been affected much by this broad, political issue. Yet it affected them critically, because the Persian empire at this time included Babylon - now Iraq - at the time home to the world's greatest concentration of Jews.

Here also were the greatest centres of Jewish intellectual life. The most important single work of Jewish cultural creativity in over 3,000 years, apart from the Bible itself - the Talmud - came into being in Babylon. The struggle between Persia and Byzantium, in our period, led increasingly to a separation between Jews under Byzantine, Christian rule and Jews under Persian rule.

Beyond all this, the Jews who lived under Christian rule seemed to have lost the knowledge of their own culturally specific languages - Hebrew and Aramaic - and to have taken on the use of Latin or Greek or other non-Jewish, local, languages. This in turn must have meant that they also lost access to the central literary works of Jewish culture - the Torah, Mishnah, poetry, midrash, even liturgy.

The loss of the unifying force represented by language - and of the associated literature - was a major step towards assimilation and disappearance. In these circumstances, with contact with the one place where Jewish cultural life continued to prosper - Babylon - cut off by conflict with Persia, Jewish life in the Christian world of late antiquity was not simply a pale shadow of what it had been three or four centuries earlier. It was doomed.

Had Islam not come along, the conflict with Persia would have continued. The separation between western Judaism, that of Christendom, and Babylonian Judaism, that of Mesopotamia, would have intensified. Jewry in the west would have declined to disappearance in many areas. And Jewry in the east would have become just another oriental cult.

But this was all prevented by the rise of Islam. The Islamic conquests of the seventh century changed the world, and did so with dramatic, wide-ranging and permanent effect for the Jews.

Within a century of the death of Mohammad, in 632, Muslim armies had conquered almost the whole of the world where Jews lived, from Spain eastward across North Africa and the Middle East as far as the eastern frontier of Iran and beyond. Almost all the Jews in the world were now ruled by Islam. This new situation transformed Jewish existence. Their fortunes changed in legal, demographic, social, religious, political, geographical, economic, linguistic and cultural terms - all for the better.

First, things improved politically. Almost everywhere in Christendom where Jews had lived now formed part of the same political space as Babylon - Cordoba and Basra lay in the same political world. The old frontier between the vital centre in Babylonia and the Jews of the Mediterranean basin was swept away, forever.

Political change was partnered by change in the legal status of the Jewish population: although it is not always clear what happened during the Muslim conquests, one thing is certain. The result of the conquests was, by and large, to make the Jews second-class citizens.

This should not be misunderstood: to be a second-class citizen was a far better thing to be than not to be a citizen at all. For most of these Jews, second-class citizenship represented a major advance. In Visigothic Spain, for example, shortly before the Muslim conquest in 711, the Jews had seen their children removed from them and forcibly converted to Christianity and had themselves been enslaved.

In the developing Islamic societies of the classical and medieval periods, being a Jew meant belonging to a category defined under law, enjoying certain rights and protections, alongside various obligations. These rights and protections were not as extensive or as generous as those enjoyed by Muslims, and the obligations were greater but, for the first few centuries, the Muslims themselves were a minority, and the practical differences were not all that great.

Along with legal near-equality came social and economic equality. Jews were not confined to ghettos, either literally or in terms of economic activity. The societies of Islam were, in effect, open societies. In religious terms, too, Jews enjoyed virtually full freedom. They might not build many new synagogues - in theory - and they might not make too public their profession of their faith, but there was no really significant restriction on the practice of their religion. Along with internal legal autonomy, they also enjoyed formal representation, through leaders of their own, before the authorities of the state. Imperfect and often not quite as rosy as this might sound, it was at least the broad norm.

The political unity brought by the new Islamic world-empire did not last, but it created a vast Islamic world civilisation, similar to the older Christian civilisation that it replaced. Within this huge area, Jews lived and enjoyed broadly similar status and rights everywhere. They could move around, maintain contacts, and develop their identity as Jews. A great new expansion of trade from the ninth century onwards brought the Spanish Jews - like the Muslims - into touch with the Jews and the Muslims even of India.

A ll this was encouraged by a further, critical development. Huge numbers of people in the new world of Islam adopted the language of the Muslim Arabs. Arabic gradually became the principal language of this vast area, excluding almost all the rest: Greek and Syriac, Aramaic and Coptic and Latin all died out, replaced by Arabic. Persian, too, went into a long retreat, to reappear later heavily influenced by Arabic.

The Jews moved over to Arabic very rapidly. By the early 10th century, only 300 years after the conquests, Sa'adya Gaon was translating the Bible into Arabic. Bible translation is a massive task - it is not undertaken unless there is a need for it. By about the year 900, the Jews had largely abandoned other languages and taken on Arabic.

The change of language in its turn brought the Jews into direct contact with broader cultural developments. The result from the 10th century on was a striking pairing of two cultures. The Jews of the Islamic world developed an entirely new culture, which differed from their culture before Islam in terms of language, cultural forms, influences, and uses. Instead of being concerned primarily with religion, the new Jewish culture of the Islamic world, like that of its neighbours, mixed the religious and the secular to a high degree. The contrast, both with the past and with medieval Christian Europe, was enormous.

Like their neighbours, these Jews wrote in Arabic in part, and in a Jewish form of that language. The use of Arabic brought them close to the Arabs. But the use of a specific Jewish form of that language maintained the barriers between Jew and Muslim. The subjects that Jews wrote about, and the literary forms in which they wrote about them, were largely new ones, borrowed from the Muslims and developed in tandem with developments in Arabic Islam.

Also at this time, Hebrew was revived as a language of high literature, parallel to the use among the Muslims of a high form of Arabic for similar purposes. Along with its use for poetry and artistic prose, secular writing of all forms in Hebrew and in (Judeo-)Arabic came into being, some of it of high quality.

Much of the greatest poetry in Hebrew written since the Bible comes from this period. Sa'adya Gaon, Solomon Ibn Gabirol, Ibn Ezra (Moses and Abraham), Maimonides, Yehuda Halevi, Yehudah al-Harizi, Samuel ha-Nagid, and many more - all of these names, well known today, belong in the first rank of Jewish literary and cultural endeavour.

Where did these Jews produce all this? When did they and their neighbours achieve this symbiosis, this mode of living together? The Jews did it in a number of centres of excellence. The most outstanding of these was Islamic Spain, where there was a true Jewish Golden Age, alongside a wave of cultural achievement among the Muslim population. The Spanish case illustrates a more general pattern, too...

...What happened in Islamic Spain - waves of Jewish cultural prosperity paralleling waves of cultural prosperity among the Muslims - exemplifies a larger pattern in Arab Islam. In Baghdad, between the ninth and the twelfth centuries; in Qayrawan (in north Africa), between the ninth and the 11th centuries; in Cairo, between the 10th and the 12th centuries, and elsewhere, the rise and fall of cultural centres of Islam tended to be reflected in the rise and fall of Jewish cultural activity in the same places.

This was not coincidence, and nor was it the product of particularly enlightened liberal patronage by Muslim rulers. It was the product of a number of deeper features of these societies, social and cultural, legal and economic, linguistic and political, which together enabled and indeed encouraged the Jews of the Islamic world to create a novel sub-culture within the high civilisation of the time.

This did not last for ever; the period of culturally successful symbiosis between Jew and Arab Muslim in the middle ages came to a close by about 1300. In reality, it had reached this point even earlier, with the overall relative decline in the importance and vitality of Arabic culture, both in relation to western European cultures and in relation to other cultural forms within Islam itself; Persian and Turkish.

Jewish cultural prosperity in the middle ages operated in large part as a function of Muslim, Arabic cultural (and to some degree political) prosperity: when Muslim Arabic culture thrived, so did that of the Jews; when Muslim Arabic culture declined, so did that of the Jews.

In the case of the Jews, however, the cultural capital thus created also served as the seed-bed of further growth elsewhere - in Christian Spain and in the Christian world more generally.

The Islamic world was not the only source of inspiration for the Jewish cultural revival that came later in Christian Europe, but it certainly was a major contributor to that development. Its significance cannot be overestimated.

David J Wasserstein is the Eugene Greener Jr Professor of Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University. This article is adapted from last week's Jordan Lectures in Comparative Religion at the School of Oriental and African Studies.

The Jews moved over to Arabic very rapidly. By the early 10th century, only 300 years after the conquests, Sa'adya Gaon was translating the Bible into Arabic. Bible translation is a massive task - it is not undertaken unless there is a need for it. By about the year 900, the Jews had largely abandoned other languages and taken on Arabic.

As their own language is just like a corrupted form of Arabic, it's no surprise they'd easily adopt Arabic. After all it would've been like them going back to the language of Moses & Abraham (pbut).

Even today in occupied Palestine, they try to revive their language by modelling it on Arabic, as Arabic is the most pristine form of Semitic language alive.

The Jews moved over to Arabic very rapidly. By the early 10th century, only 300 years after the conquests, Sa'adya Gaon was translating the Bible into Arabic. Bible translation is a massive task - it is not undertaken unless there is a need for it. By about the year 900, the Jews had largely abandoned other languages and taken on Arabic.

As their own language is just like a corrupted form of Arabic, it's no surprise they'd easily adopt Arabic. After all it would've been like them going back to the language of Moses & Abraham (pbut).

Even today in occupied Palestine, they try to revive their language by modelling it on Arabic, as Arabic is the most pristine form of Semitic language alive.

The way Israelis talk is ugly. It sounds like Arabic's ugly step-sister.

Jewish cultural prosperity in the middle ages operated in large part as a function of Muslim, Arabic cultural (and to some degree political) prosperity: when Muslim Arabic culture thrived, so did that of the Jews; when Muslim Arabic culture declined, so did that of the Jews.

In the case of the Jews, however, the cultural capital thus created also served as the seed-bed of further growth elsewhere - in Christian Spain and in the Christian world more generally.

There's the difference between the Jews and the Muslims, spelled out.

The Muslim Golden Age went to seed, rather than serve as the seed-bed of flourishing. What happened? More Islam. A stricter Islam put an end to the Golden Age and there has been no recovery from that for 800 years.

And now, the numpties of islam are calling for what? A new Golden Age of learning? Of course not. They are calling for stricter Islam.

Verily! Those who believe, and those who are Jews and Christians, and Sabians, whoever believes in (the Oneness of) God and the Last Day and does righteous good deeds shall have their reward with their Lord, on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve. ( The Quran, al-Baqara, v. 62)

Say: "O people of the Scripture (Jews): Come to a word that is just between us and you, that we worship none but God (Alone), and that we associate no partners with Him, and that none of us shall take others as lords besides God. Then, if they turn away, say: "Bear witness that we are Muslims." (The Quran, Aali Imran, v. 64)

And there are, certainly, among the people of the Scripture (Jews), those who believe in God and in that which has been revealed to you, and in that which has been revealed to them, humbling themselves before God. They do not sell the Verses of God for a small gain, for them is a reward with their Lord. Surely, God is Swift in account. (The Quran, Aali Imran, v. 199)

And argue not with the people of the Scripture (Jews), unless it be in (a way) that is better (with good words and in good manner, inviting them to Islamic Monotheism), except with such of them as do wrong; and say (to them): "We believe in that which has been revealed to us and revealed to you; our god (God) and your god (God) is One (i.e. God), and to Him we have submitted (as Muslims)." (The Quran, al-Ankaboot, v.46)

Say: "Believe in it (the Qur'an) or do not believe (in it). Verily those who were given knowledge before it (the Jews like Rabbi Abdullah bin Salam, and Christian scholars like Salman the Persian), when it is recited to them, fall down on their faces in humble prostration." (The Quran, al-Isra, v. 107)

Those to whom We have given the Bible (such as Rabbi Abdullah bin Salam and other Jews who converted to Islam), rejoice at what has been revealed unto you (i.e. the Qur'an), but there are among the Confederates (from the Jews and pagans) those who reject a part thereof (from the Quran). Say: "I am commanded only to worship God (Alone) and not to join partners with Him. To Him (Alone) I call and to Him is my return." (The Quran, Ar-Ra'd, v.36)

Narrated Anas: When Abdullah bin Salam (Jewish rabbi) heard the arrival of the Prophet at Medina, he came to him and said, "I am going to ask you about three things which nobody knows except a prophet: "What is the first portent of the Hour? What will be the first meal taken by the people of Paradise? Why does a child resemble its father, and why does it resemble its maternal uncle" God's Apostle said, "Gabriel has just now told me of their answers." Abdullah said, "He (i.e. Gabriel), from amongst all the angels, is the enemy of the Jews." God's Apostle said, "The first portent of the Hour will be a fire that will bring together the people from the east to the west; the first meal of the people of Paradise will be Extra-lobe (caudate lobe) of fish-liver. As for the resemblance of the child to its parents: If a man has sexual intercourse with his wife and his discharge (sperm) overpowers that of his wife (egg), the child will resemble the father, and if that which is discharged by the woman (egg) overpowers the man's (sperm), the child will resemble her." On that Abdullah bin Salam said, "I testify that you are the Apostle of God." Abdullah bin Salam further said, "O God's Apostle! The Jews are liars, and if they should come to know about my conversion to Islam before you ask them (about me), they would tell a lie about me." The Jews came to God's Apostle and Abdullah went inside the house. God's Apostle asked (the Jews), "What kind of man is Abdullah bin Salam amongst you?" They replied, "He is the most learned person amongst us, and the best amongst us, and the son of the best amongst us." God's Apostle said, "What do you think if he embraces Islam (will you do as he does)?" The Jews said, "May God save him from it." Then Abdullah bin Salam came out in front of them saying, "I testify that None has the right to be worshiped but God and that Muhammad is the Apostle of God." Thereupon they said, "He is the evilest among us, and the son of the evilest amongst us," and continued talking badly of him. [Bukhari]

Narrated Sad bin Abi Waqqas: I have never heard the Prophet saying about anybody walking on the Earth that he is from the people of Paradise except Abdullah bin Salam. The following Verse was revealed concerning him: "And a witness from the children of Israel testifies that this Qur'an is true" (46.10) [Bukhari]

And those who disbelieved, say: "You (O Muhammad صلى الله عليه و سلم) are not a Messenger." Say: "Sufficient as a witness between me and you is God and those too who have knowledge of the Scripture (such as Abdullah bin Salam and other Jews and Christians who embraced Islam)." (The Quran ar-Ra'd, v.43)iThose to whom We gave the Scripture (Jews ) recognise him (Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم) as they recognise their sons. But verily, a party of them conceal the truth while they know it - [i.e. the qualities of Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم which are written in the Bible]. ( The Quran, al-Baqara, v.146)

Safiyah, daughter of Huyayi bin Akhtab the Jew said: I was the closest child to my father and my uncle Abi Yasir’s heart. Whenever they saw me with a child of theirs, they should pamper me so tenderly to the exclusion of anyone else. However, with the advent of the Messenger of God (God's blessings & peace upon him) and settling in Quba’ with Bani ‘Amr bin ‘Awf, my father, Huyayi bin Akhtab and my uncle Abu Yasir bin Akhtab went to see him and did not return until sunset when they came back walking lazily and fully dejected. I, as usually, hurried to meet them smiling, but they would not turn to me for the grief that caught them. I heard my uncle Abu Yasir say to Ubai and Huyayi: "Is it really he (the prophet that the Jews had been awaiting)?" The former said: "It is he, I swear by God!" "Did you really recognize him?" they asked. He answered: "Yes, and my heart is burning with enmity towards him (because he is an Arab instead of a Jew)"[Ibn Hisham 1/518, 519]

Say: "Believe in it (the Qur'an) or do not believe (in it). Verily those who were given knowledge before it (the Jews like Rabbi Abdullah bin Salam, and Christian scholars like Salman the Persian), when it is recited to them, fall down on their faces in humble prostration." (The Quran, al-Isra, v. 107)

Those to whom We have given the Bible (such as Rabbi Abdullah bin Salam and other Jews who converted to Islam), rejoice at what has been revealed unto you (i.e. the Qur'an), but there are among the Confederates (from the Jews and pagans) those who reject a part thereof (from the Quran). Say: "I am commanded only to worship God (Alone) and not to join partners with Him. To Him (Alone) I call and to Him is my return." (The Quran, Ar-Ra'd, v.36)

Narrated Anas: When Abdullah bin Salam (Jewish rabbi) heard the arrival of the Prophet at Medina, he came to him and said, "I am going to ask you about three things which nobody knows except a prophet: "What is the first portent of the Hour? What will be the first meal taken by the people of Paradise? Why does a child resemble its father, and why does it resemble its maternal uncle" God's Apostle said, "Gabriel has just now told me of their answers." Abdullah said, "He (i.e. Gabriel), from amongst all the angels, is the enemy of the Jews." God's Apostle said, "The first portent of the Hour will be a fire that will bring together the people from the east to the west; the first meal of the people of Paradise will be Extra-lobe (caudate lobe) of fish-liver. As for the resemblance of the child to its parents: If a man has sexual intercourse with his wife and his discharge (sperm) overpowers that of his wife (egg), the child will resemble the father, and if that which is discharged by the woman (egg) overpowers the man's (sperm), the child will resemble her." On that Abdullah bin Salam said, "I testify that you are the Apostle of God." Abdullah bin Salam further said, "O God's Apostle! The Jews are liars, and if they should come to know about my conversion to Islam before you ask them (about me), they would tell a lie about me." The Jews came to God's Apostle and Abdullah went inside the house. God's Apostle asked (the Jews), "What kind of man is Abdullah bin Salam amongst you?" They replied, "He is the most learned person amongst us, and the best amongst us, and the son of the best amongst us." God's Apostle said, "What do you think if he embraces Islam (will you do as he does)?" The Jews said, "May God save him from it." Then Abdullah bin Salam came out in front of them saying, "I testify that None has the right to be worshiped but God and that Muhammad is the Apostle of God." Thereupon they said, "He is the evilest among us, and the son of the evilest amongst us," and continued talking badly of him. [Bukhari]

Narrated Sad bin Abi Waqqas: I have never heard the Prophet saying about anybody walking on the Earth that he is from the people of Paradise except Abdullah bin Salam. The following Verse was revealed concerning him: "And a witness from the children of Israel testifies that this Qur'an is true" (46.10) [Bukhari]

And those who disbelieved, say: "You (O Muhammad صلى الله عليه و سلم) are not a Messenger." Say: "Sufficient as a witness between me and you is God and those too who have knowledge of the Scripture (such as Abdullah bin Salam and other Jews and Christians who embraced Islam)." (The Quran ar-Ra'd, v.43)iThose to whom We gave the Scripture (Jews ) recognise him (Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم) as they recognise their sons. But verily, a party of them conceal the truth while they know it - [i.e. the qualities of Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم which are written in the Bible]. ( The Quran, al-Baqara, v.146)

Safiyah, daughter of Huyayi bin Akhtab the Jew said: I was the closest child to my father and my uncle Abi Yasir’s heart. Whenever they saw me with a child of theirs, they should pamper me so tenderly to the exclusion of anyone else. However, with the advent of the Messenger of God (God's blessings & peace upon him) and settling in Quba’ with Bani ‘Amr bin ‘Awf, my father, Huyayi bin Akhtab and my uncle Abu Yasir bin Akhtab went to see him and did not return until sunset when they came back walking lazily and fully dejected. I, as usually, hurried to meet them smiling, but they would not turn to me for the grief that caught them. I heard my uncle Abu Yasir say to Ubai and Huyayi: "Is it really he (the prophet that the Jews had been awaiting)?" The former said: "It is he, I swear by God!" "Did you really recognize him?" they asked. He answered: "Yes, and my heart is burning with enmity towards him (because he is an Arab instead of a Jew)"[Ibn Hisham 1/518, 519]

The Muslim Golden Age went to seed, rather than serve as the seed-bed of flourishing. What happened? More Islam. A stricter Islam put an end to the Golden Age and there has been no recovery from that for 800 years.

When Western civilisation has had 800 years under its belt, then you can comment.

And now, the numpties of islam are calling for what? A new Golden Age of learning? Of course not. They are calling for stricter Islam.

Abu, falah, you are agents of decline and cultural strangulation.

Fact is Muslims were stricter in Islam in the first few generations, and slowly that tapered off over the first 800 years. And surprise surprise, decline followed the loosening of adherence to Islam, every step of the way.